Fraudsters Use AI To Beat UTME Facial Recognition

The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, has raised the alarm at the rate at which fraudsters manipulate technology to perpetrate examination malpractice.

He disclosed that the recent discoveries involved the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to blend faces of two candidates and make the resulting picture look like that of an Albino in a bid to exploit facial recognition vulnerabilities.

This was disclosed in the JAMB’s weekly bulletin, released on Monday.

According to Oloyede, “Some individuals attempted to cheat by falsely declaring themselves as albino in a bid to exploit facial recognition vulnerabilities.

“They are not albinos. It is because the Al that they were using had certain features such that if they do not declare themselves as albino on f our forms, you will look critically d more.”

He pointed out that the confessions of those arrested gave insight into the high-tech fraud.

“We have never had even up to 100 albinos any year. But this year, we have 1,787 albinos. Those who declared themselves as albino, therefore, totaled 1,787.

“So, out of 2 million candidates that registered in centres across the country, we found out that one centre alone had registered 450 out of this figure as if all albinos in Africa decided to go to that particular centre. So, when one of those arrested gave us information that, look, I will tell you what really happened and he did.

“So, we went after all those who claimed to be albinos only to find out that all the genuine albinos who registered for the 2025 UTME are less than 250.

“You could all see the dark- complexion man arrested in Benin City claiming to be an albino. How do you become albino? But that is one of their strategies.

“To declare that they are albino because what they do in blending is that if you want to impersonate someone, they will take the picture of the two of you together and then blend it. When you look at the picture, It will also look like you. That’s what Al is doing now. It’s picture blending,” he stated.